Beat The Heat

Most of us train through several weeks of hot weather. Our man went running with some heat-tested veterans--and took notes. Here's what he learned about training, dressing, drinking, and thriving in the hot spots

The alarm clock jolted me into consciousness. I opened my eyes, looked around. Darkness. Stumbled out of bed, parted the curtains, and squinted out the window. More darkness.

There I stood, dazed and confused. I looked back at the clock. 3:00. Then I remembered. I was in Phoenix for a business trip; it was early...very early...on a Saturday in August, and I was going for a run.

I was training for a marathon, and my schedule called for a two-hour run. So before I left for Phoenix, I had contacted the Arizona Road Racers and asked if I could tag along with them that weekend. The club president, Mike Sheedy, e-mailed me back. "There are several training groups I can set you up with," he wrote. "Would you like to go out on Saturday morning?" You bet, I responded, envisioning an early morning long run starting at, oh, say, 7:30.

Shortly after I arrived in Phoenix and checked in at my hotel, the phone rang. "Mike sent us," said the voice on the other end. "We have a 14-mile run planned for tomorrow, and we heard you'd like to join us." Yes, definitely! "We run on trails in South Mountain Park. It's beautiful." Sounds great! "And we can pick you up at your hotel." Works for me! "Good, we'll be there at 3:30." Hmmm. "Three thirty?" I finally asked. "In the morning?" There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. "We try to start around 4 o'clock. That's the only time we can run out here."

It was my first lesson in heat training the way the pros--runners, like those in the Valley of the Sun, who have to deal with searing heat, choking humidity, or both for much of the year--do it. And considering what many scientists (to say nothing of Al Gore) are saying about the warming of the planet, we may all be joining these heat vets soon. So best to pay attention now.

Outrun the Sun: Phoenix

Thirty minutes after getting out of bed on that Saturday morning, I stood bleary-eyed in the predawn darkness outside the Hyatt Regency in my running clothes. A car pulled up with several, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed members of the Arizona Road Racers. They whisked me off to South Mountain, which looked to my New York eyes less like an urban park and more like a vast (16,000 acres) desert. I expected the parking lot to be empty at this insane hour. Instead, in the half-light of morning, I saw scores of shadows of strange creatures with misshapen backs and heads--runners wearing Camelbaks and headlamps. With these accoutrements, as well as their fuel belts and French Foreign Legion-style hats with flaps in the back, my companions looked as if they were ready for a forced march across the Sahara.

To me, the entire scene was as surreal as the hour. Yet our 4 a.m., 14-mile run through the desert was memorable not just because of the beauty of the desert at dawn but because of how well we were able to run. The key to success? Preparation and attentiveness. Everybody wore a hat, everybody carried fluids--and everybody shared them. It seemed like I couldn't run more than a quarter mile without a bottle of water or flask of sports drink being pushed in front of my face. "Take a sip," ordered one of the veterans, Doyle Scott, when I declined his initial offer. "You can't fool around out here."

There was something else the Phoenix runners demonstrated that I didn't notice in my group runs in New York: a sense of responsibility. They all kept an eye on each other, and an especially close eye on the rube from back east. "You can get into trouble real quick in this heat," says John Conant, a 63-year-old Tempe runner who had seen someone collapse at a local 8-K just a few weeks earlier. "It was hot, the guy hadn't been hydrating during the week, and he didn't drink during the race." In other words, if you don't use your head in the heat, you may find yourself falling on it.

Still, I wondered: Was the crack-of-dawn routine just to impress the New Yorker? "Nope," says Laura Nagy, 39, part of my group that morning. "You try to finish before 7 because it can be almost 100 degrees by 8."

At the end of the run, we piled into Laura's car and drove back into town for breakfast, chattering and laughing away, as bleary-eyed "early" risers--it's all relative, isn't it?--were just ambling into the restaurant. When we'd finished, I looked at my watch: not even 7:30 yet. We had beaten the heat. I had gotten my two hours in, with a little help from the experts in Phoenix. Now all I needed was a nap.

Go Slow: Baton Rouge

"The word 'hot' is not even listed in the American Meteorological Society's glossary," says Jack Williams, a spokesman for the association. "It's not a scientific term. What makes weather 'hot' is a matter of what you're used to."

The "hot" in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, bears little resemblance to the dry, desert heat of Phoenix. "Down here, it's hot ahynd sticky," says longtime resident Kenny Dunaway, 51, with his gumbo-thick drawl. From mid-May through the end of October, the weather is "oppressively tropical," he says. "It's as close to jungle running as you can get in North America." The average daily heat and humidity in Baton Rouge in July (91 degrees, 74 percent humidity) is comparable to midsummer in Nigeria. Dunaway has been running in these American tropics since high school. And although the climate is far different from the Valley of the Sun, the attitude among Bayou runners toward the heat is similar. "We take it seriously," he says.

Preparations for Sunday long runs start on Saturday, when, Dunaway says, "I eat light and drink heavy"--as in water, not Lone Star Beer, which he saves for the night after the run, along with all the spicy Cajun food that he forgoes the night before. "Your body has to digest all that, and in the really intense heat, that's tough on your stomach," says Dunaway. The night before summer long runs, he sticks with salads and fruits, which are not only light but also have a high water content to assist with hydration.

The hot, moist conditions Dunaway and his running partners face in Louisiana demand extra caution. Humidity on top of heat drastically decreases the body's ability to cool itself. "Sweating doesn't cool the body; it's the evaporation of the sweat that makes you feel cooler," says Lisa Bliss, M.D., medical director of the Badwater Ultramarathon. "When it's humid, it's harder for the sweat to evaporate." The most effective way to deal with the oppressive combination of high humidity and heat? "Let your body self-select the pace," says Dr. Bliss.

In other words, when it's hot, slow down. "If it ain't happening, it ain't happening," says Dunaway. "What we say here is 'Don't be a hero in the heat.'"

Run, Don't Hide: Miami

All the heat vets agree that you need to keep your pace easy when the temps and humidity climb, but none of them, including Steve Brookner, 49, president of the Miami-based Bikila Athletic Club, suggest hiding from the heat. "The good thing about Miami is that we can train outdoors year-round," says Brookner. "The bad thing is that there are days when you open your door, even at 5 a.m., and you're hit with hot, sticky air. You think, This run is going to suck, but it doesn't if you're prepared."

The Bikila club members carefully plan their running routes to pass by water fountains and stashes of fluids that they put out beforehand. That way, everyone has ample opportunity to drink up. Brookner even gives new members of the 3-year-old club a list of hot-weather running tips.

Brookner advises newcomers to the Miami running scene to simply get used to the heat through limited exposure. He tells newbies to go out during the hottest part of the day and do a very slow, short walk or run a few easy miles a couple of times a week for their first few weeks. Medical experts agree. "Spending all your time in air-conditioning and then expecting to run well outdoors in the heat is not going to cut it," says William Roberts, M.D., former president of the American College of Sports Medicine and the medical director of the Twin Cities Marathon. If you want to train in the heat, you have to learn to live in it first. Gradually exposing yourself to the hot weather--for as little as 30 minutes a day--helps induce changes that make the body more tolerant of heat stress.Feel It: Mojave Desert

Finding heat to hang out in is a piece of cake for Rick Miller of Ridgecrest, California--his town is located in the Mojave Desert. "It's right outside my front door," he says. And he used this strategy of slowly acclimatizing to the heat to successfully prepare for Badwater, the 135-mile Death Valley torture test that is generally regarded as the toughest hot-weather race in America. In the weeks and months before the race, Miller made an effort to get outside in the heat as often as possible. "I spent extra time outside during lunch," says Miller, a retired Navy frogman who moved to Ridgecrest in 1993. "I often just piddled around the yard." His preparations paid off: Miller finished the 2001 edition of Badwater in a respectable time of 43 hours, 21 minutes. "I learned that you don't have to run in the heat to do heat training," he says.

These days when Miller, who has completed five 100-mile races in addition to Badwater, does his 20-mile training runs through the desert, he dresses like a Bedouin who just came back from a U.S. shopping spree: loose, flowing long-sleeve shirts to protect him from the sun; a Patagonia fly-fishing hat to cover his head and face; and 20-ounce water bottles that fit the palms of his hands for fast and efficient hydration on the run. (For more on what the well-dressed heat runner wears, see "Cool Duds") He didn't come up with that ensemble overnight. "Every time you run in the heat, you gain more knowledge," he says.

Oops: Puerto Rico

Too bad some of us (namely me) have to learn the same lessons over and over again. In February, I traveled to Puerto Rico to race a 10-K. It was 25 degrees when I got on the plane in New York and a humid 85 when I got off in San Juan. Marvelous conditions for a vacation, if not for serious running.

The race started at 5:30 in the afternoon. Ignoring everything I had learned, I went flying out from the start. I hitched on to the 40-minute pace group, convincing myself I was feeling good. And for the first couple of miles I did feel good--so good, in fact, that I blew by the first water stop without grabbing fluids. "It's only a 10-K!" I told myself. It was about that point when someone--I'm still trying to figure out who--dropped a piano on my back.

By mile three, every step was agony as my body, unused to the conditions, overheated. By mile four, I had come to the conclusion that if I survived this race, I would take up bowling and never run another step. And by mile five, I wanted one of the cops along the course to take out his pistol and end my misery right there. I staggered across the finish line, thinking I might pass out. (Others did, including one of the top American women racing, proving that even elite, youthful talent can wither in the heat.)

As I reeled through the finish-line area, the voices of my friends from Phoenix were whispering in my ear: "You idiot, didn't you learn anything that day in South Mountain Park?" I could only shake my head in shame. The heat must have gotten to me.

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